Almost everything you know about heroin addiction is wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it is obviously wrong. Heroin is not highly addictive; withdrawal from it is not medically serious; addicts do not become criminals to feed their habit; addicts do not need any medical assistance to stop taking heroin; and contrary to received wisdom, heroin addiction most certainly IS a moral or spiritual problem. Based on his experience as a prison doctor and as a psychiatrist in a large general hospital in Birmingham, Dr. Dalrymple argues that addiction to heroin is not an illness at all, and that doctors only make it worse. They deceive both the addicts and themselves by pretending that they have something to offer. In this brilliant, entertaining and provocative book, Theodore Dalrymple explains how and why a literary tradition dating back to De Quincey and Coleridge, and continuing up to the deeply sociopathic William Burroughs and beyond, has misled all Western societies for generations about the nature of heroin addiction. These writers' self-dramatizing and dishonest accounts of their own addiction have been accepted uncritically, and have been more influential by far in forming public attitudes than the whole of pharmacological science. As a result, a self-serving, self-perpetuating and completely useless medical bureaucracy has been set up to deal with the problem. With scathing wit, implacable logic and savage denunciation, Dr. Dalrymple exposes the mythology surrounding heroin addiction. Moving seamlessly between literature, pharmacology, history and philosophy, he demonstrates what happens when the nature of a social problem is so thoroughly misunderstood, and when human beings are regarded as inanimate objects rather than as agents of their own destiny. His scintillating, iconoclastic little book has an importance far beyond its immediate subject matter.

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Review

...a brilliant observer of both medicine and society, and his book wittily engages with two versions of the current nonsense. -- Kenneth Minogue, professor emeritus at The London School of Economics and author of The Liberal Mind

It is a taboo-shattering, sacred cow-slaughtering, myth-destroying little gem of a book. -- Dominic Lawson at The Independent

Synopsis

Almost everything you know about heroin addiction is wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it is obviously wrong. Heroin is not highly addictive; withdrawal from it is not medically serious; addicts do not become criminals to feed their habit; addicts do not need any medical assistance to stop taking heroin; and contrary to received wisdom, heroin addiction most certainly IS a moral or spiritual problem. Based on his experience as a prison doctor and as a psychiatrist in a large general hospital in Birmingham, Dr. Dalrymple argues that addiction to heroin is not an illness at all, and that doctors only make it worse. They deceive both the addicts and themselves by pretending that they have something to offer.In this brilliant, entertaining and provocative book, Theodore Dalrymple explains how and why a literary tradition dating back to De Quincey and Coleridge, and continuing up to the deeply sociopathic William Burroughs and beyond, has misled all Western societies for generations about the nature of heroin addiction.

These writers' self-dramatizing and dishonest accounts of their own addiction have been accepted uncritically, and have been more influential by far in forming public attitudes than the whole of pharmacological science.As a result, a self-serving, self-perpetuating and completely useless medical bureaucracy has been set up to deal with the problem. With scathing wit, implacable logic and savage denunciation, Dr. Dalrymple exposes the mythology surrounding heroin addiction. Moving seamlessly between literature, pharmacology, history and philosophy, he demonstrates what happens when the nature of a social problem is so thoroughly misunderstood, and when human beings are regarded as inanimate objects rather than as agents of their own destiny. His scintillating, iconoclastic little book has an importance far beyond its immediate subject matter.

This book, by an eminent psychiatrist who has worked in a busy Birmingham hospital and as a prison psychiatrist, places Heroin adiction outside the remit of medicine and classes it firmly as a moral problem. He dates the late phenomenon of 'heroin chic' as well as the deeply rooted mythology of heroin withdrawal, displayed in such "untruthful" films as 'Trainspotting', to the self aggrandising and hyperbolic works by De Quincey and Coleridge in the eightenth century and, in the twentieth century, by the works of William Burroughs and such teenage fiction as 'Junk' by Melvin Burgess. Dalrymple asserts that withdrawal from heroin does not require the bureacracy of special clinics and 'drug workers' and, far from being a medical emergency, constitutes nothing more painful than a three day spot of flu. Withdrawal from Alcohol and from long term abuse of tranquilisers like Diazepam [Valium] are far more dangerous and much more painful for the addict. The author also questions heroin as inevitably leading to criminality and suggests that, from his experience as a prison doctor, heroin addiction is just one more mark of criminality.

The book is elegantly written, often amusing [the extracts from De Quincey are proof of a poor talent planted in a writer of masive self-regard and are likely to cause some readers to laugh aloud at the melodramatic vanity of the 'Opium Eater'] and faltlessly researched as well as replete with first hand knowledge of the realities of heroin addiction and withdrawal.

The author successfully persuades that heroin addiction may not be as physically harrowing as addicts may claim. The book is also funny in parts. However, it quickly turns into a bit of a self-righteous rant. More comedy please, less drone!Rosielee

'Junk Medicine' and 'Romancing Opiates' are the same book under different titles. I've just checked my copy of 'Romancing Opiates' against the searchable pages of 'Junk Medicine' above, and the contents are identical.

This book is wonderfully intelligent and well-written and amusing and engrossing, as you'd expect from Theodore Dalrymple.

I just bought this apparently new book, only to discover that it is only a reprint, with no changes except a different title, of an already published book ("Romancing opiates", 2006) by the same author, that I already have.I feel cheated and think that this publishing behavior is really a bad habit.